On the Defence of the Fatherland Issue

Published:First published inPravdaNo. 174, August 1, 1929.

      Written in German in December 1916.

      Translated from the German.

      Published according to the manuscript.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1964,

      Moscow,Volume 23,

      pages161-162.Translated:M. S. Levin, The Late Joe Fineberg and and OthersTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      2002

      (2005).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Thebourgeoisie and its supporters in the labour movement,
the Grütlians, usually pose the question thus:

Eitherwe recognise in principle our duty to defend the fatherland, or
we leave our country defenceless.

Thatpresentation is fundamentally wrong.

Thisis how the question stands in reality:

Eitherwe allow ourselves to be killed in the interests of the
imperialist bourgeoisie, or we systematically prepare the majority of the
exploited, and ourselves, for seizure—at the price of less sacrifice—of
the banks and expropriation of the bourgeoisie in order to put an end to
the high cost of living and war.

Thefirst presentation of the question is thoroughly bourgeois, not
socialist. It disregards the fact that we are living in the imperialist
era, that the present war is an imperialist war, that in this war
Switzerland will under no circumstances be rangedagainstimperialism, buton the sideof one or the other imperialist
coalition, i. e., will in fact become an accomplice of one or another group
of the big robber powers, that the Swiss bourgeoisie has long been tied to
imperialist interests by thousands of threads. It is of ho concern whether
this is implemented by a system of inter-relationships and “mutual
participation” of the big banks through export of capital, or through the
tourist trade, which thrives on the patronage of foreign millionaires, or
through unscrupulous exploitation of disfranchised foreign workers, etc.

Inshort, all the fundamental tenets of socialism, all the socialist
ideas, have been forgotten. The predatory nature of the imperialist war is
being embellished. One’s “own” bourgeoisie is being depicted as an
innocent lamb and the case-hardened bank directors of present-day
Switzerland as heroic William Tells, and, furthermore, the secret
agreements between Swiss and foreign banks and between Swiss and foreign
diplomats are overlooked. And this incredible hotchpotch of bourgeois lies
is covered up by a fine-sounding and “popular” phrase meant to deceive
the people: “defence of the fatherland!”